Mark Evanier's Blog, page 209

Donations Paused

PayPal has put a temporary freeze on my being able to accept donations through them. I think I know what it's about and I should have it cleared up in a day or three. If you were about to send me money, hold that thought.

Today's Video Link

Here's footage of Los Angeles back in what they say is the twenties — not the current twenties but the previous twenties. The film has been tweaked and colorized and someone added a bogus soundtrack to it but it's still wonderful history. I especially like those old cars, every one of which looks like Laurel and Hardy should be stepping out of it…

Failure is an Option

There's a saying I don't like much that goes "The man who won't be beaten can't be beaten." It sounds good at arm's length but when you think about it, what if two men who won't be beaten fight a duel to the death? That's going to be a helluva long duel to the death. And in most battles, it takes more than refusing to be beaten to win. It might take, for example, skill or strength or maybe brains.

In every heavyweight boxing match, you have two guys who won't be beaten…and then one is.

Years ago, I had a friend who lived by that credo and he was enormously destructive, both to himself and to those around him. It was an obsessive necessity for him to succeed in everything he did…or at least, to never admit he hadn't. He often seemed to have those two things confused. And like I said, he was destructive. If you had, let's say, a mouse running around your house and you asked him to catch it, he would almost certainly catch that mouse. He might, in the process, destroy your home but he would catch that mouse.

Or if he didn't, he'd just insist he had. There was kind of a circular "logic" to his thinking. It was kind of like, "You may think I didn't succeed but as we all know, I always succeed so that proves you're wrong." Something like that.

Few if any of you would know this person or even know of him. He was not particularly successful in his life; not even in any one aspect of his life. But to hear him tell it, he succeeded in every single thing he did…or on those rare occasions when even he couldn't claim he'd achieved what he set out to do, someone sabotaged him, someone lied about him, someone cheated, etc. Sound familiar? I'm not talking about Donald Trump here.

Well, yes I am but I'm also talking about an awful lot of other people these days and not just people in any particular political party. I keep running into or reading about people who tell us how unbeatable they are…and they don't have to do this. If they really win all the time, we'll notice. But since they don't win all the time, they keep telling us they do, how they never lose, how they always "dominate." There's one writer acquaintance I have who just loves that word…"dominate."

He always sounds to me like he will not be satisfied if he is very successful. He must be more successful than someone else. If he won 20 million dollars in the lottery, he would be really pissed if you won 30 million.

My closest friends do not do this, which is one of the reasons they're my closest friends. They get joy from the success of others. They don't make everything into a contest in which you have to "one-up" the other guy. There's just too much of that in this world. Your goal in life should be to be happy…not to be happy when someone else isn't.

Today's Video Link

Here's the Legal Eagle in the video I promised. In the "pay" version of this, you don't get the commercial at the end and instead, he makes a slightly firmer summation about why the 14th Amendment will probably not keep Donald Trump off presidential ballots…

Day Six…

This blog began on December 18, 2000 so this is Day 8,311. When people ask me, "Do you have a pet?" I usually answer, "No, I have a blog." It's almost the same thing in that you have to keep checking on it and it requires constant feeding. If you are grateful for my pet…

Today's Video Link

This is Sara Bareilles who, with a fine orchestra and backup singers, delivers a nice rendition of "When You Wish Upon a Star." I've always had a strange fondness for this song — strange because I really don't believe in its message. Wishing upon a star is harmless, I suppose, but if you want your dreams to come true, you're going to have to do a lot more than wish, especially because Fate is not always kind and often does not step in and see you through.

Still, it's a great song. Like almost everyone else, I liked it best when the cricket sang it but this is pretty good too…

Today's Political Observation

I'm not looking at the news much these days but every time I do, I see articles about how the prosecutors prosecuting Donald Trump want him to shut up and I see "legal scholars" (the quotes denote that some of them are dubious in their expertise) saying that every time Trump opens his mouth, he confesses to something and hands them evidence to use against him. What is wrong with this picture?

Earlier today, I started writing but did not finish or post an item about how all this stuff about how the 14th amendment could get Trump disqualified from many ballots. I'm thinking that the wording of it seems too vague or arguable to me to achieve what many are hoping it will achieve. I'm still not convinced he'll be the Republican nominee but if he is, he'll be on all or most state ballots.

But I'm not going to finish or post what I started writing. A little while ago, I watched a new video by Devin "Legal Eagle" Stone. It's members-only at the moment but it should be on YouTube (and on this site) later this evening or tomorrow. He basically says the same thing but says it better with more backing in laws and precedents. So I'm going to let an attorney speak for me…which is something Mr. Trump oughta try.

Corn Flakes

This image seems to be ricocheting around Ye Olde Internet and several folks, knowing of my dislike for candy corn, have sent it to me. It's a sign for MJ's Steel City Sports Bar & Grill, which Google tells me is located on Cliff Mine Road in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania.  Next time I'm in that area which I've never been to and can't imagine why I would ever have reason to visit, I'll have to drop in and try their Chicken Parm Hoagie.

Actually, I have stopped belittling candy corn since my sweet tooth went away, which mysteriously happened a year or so after my 2006 Gastric Bypass Surgery.  I am still repulsed at the remembered taste of candy corn but now I also feel that way about Hershey Bars, M&Ms, Butterfingers, Reese's Pieces, Raisinets, Snickers, Milky Ways, chocolate-covered anything, etc.  So it seems unfair to pick on candy corn.  Cole slaw is, of course, quite another matter.

Day Five…

Once I post this post on this blog, there will be 31,182 posts on this blog. 238 of those are "encore" reruns so as you are reading this, there are 30,944 unique posts on this blog. There's also an additional 174 pages of other articles and essays. I cite these numbers partly to inform anyone who might be curious about this kind of thing but mainly to make those of you who haven't clicked on the banner below think you really oughta…

Today's Political Observation

When a longtime politician reaches the stage of life when he or she knows they're never going to run for public office again, some of them become very honest and outspoken. Mitt Romney seems to be in that stage these days. There was never a moment when I wanted to see him become President of the United States but if in 2012, he'd talked like he does now instead of how he talked then, I'd have been less afraid of him winning.